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Topic: The Penitent Sea-help please (Read 1508 times)

Okay, so I've learned my lesson, and will now post any submissions here first, to get the bugs worked out, before I put them on the main page.

Here is something that I would like to enter into the "New Take on Hell" codex, but I know it needs work, but I don't know exactly what. I would appreciate any advice than can be given.

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Some sailor’s speak of Fiddler’s Green, where the music never stops and the rum flows free. Some speak of Davy Jones, and how he waits for those whose souls are a dark as the deep. Yet there is one more possible destination for those who sail the seas, home seamen who deserve neither eternal peace nor d**nation. They call it the Penitent Sea.

There are two ways to reach the Penitent Sea. The first was is to be a sailor, and to have lived your live short of virtue, yet not so evil as to deserve eternal torment. Upon death, you would find yourself on the Sea, awaiting such time until you have worked off you soul debt. The other way is while still living, and sailing to the heart of a certain maelstrom in the southern ocean.

However you get to the Penitent Sea, you will find yourself floating amidst a field of wreckage. If you are fortunate, you can find a piece large enough to allow you to float. If not, then you will slowly tire, until you begin to slip beneath the waves, to feel your life slowly ebb away. You will then wake, to find yourself floating in a field of flotsam and jetsam. If you are fortunate, you will be able to find a piece large enough to allow you to float. If you can climb fully upon your raft (or if you were prepared with some sort of portable boat), you could theoretically float forever, for there are not currents or winds in the Penitent Sea. If you have a paddle or sail, however, you could try and set a course for the island at the center of the Sea. Unless you have come prepared, however, you would succumb to the blistering sun first, or die of hunger and thirst, before you reach the island. After your death, you would wake to find yourself floating, again.

If, by determination and luck you do reach the island, you would first have to make it past the crab guardians. The size of a small horse, their purpose is to not let anyone past the shore who has not paid off their worldly sins. If you try to fight the crabs, and manage to kill one, two more will rise from it’s broken shell. If you should die in your attempt, well, you can probably guess.

Those souls whose sin has been washed away by the Penitent Sea can freely pass the guardians, and make their way to the center of the island, were there is a cave filled with a golden light. They can walk into the cave and pass through the light, ending up either in Fiddler’s Green. If a living person should pass through the light, then they would end up back on earth, on some tropical island.

After surviving all those horrors I would imagine they would be a badass....or a psychological wreck. But I like the badass version better. Imagine fighting your way through all that. Do they have memory of all the lives? Able to learn from past mistakes? If so, over time they will be survival experts and probably battle hardened because of the crab guardians.

I am thinking maybe it needs some more punishments, to make it a bit more Hell-ish. Maybe I'll put in an area that is shark infested, for those sailors who were violent and wrathful, and another area full of entangling seaweed for those who were covetous.

Maybe some jellyfish, I like jellyfish. What sin would warrant jellyfish stings? Pride, maybe?

What about an octopus that puts it's tentacle's in unpleasant places (to punish the lustful)?

Seagulls to eat the flesh of the gluttonous (those who ate are now eaten)? (Although I'm not really sure if I want to turn it into a Seven Deadly Sins thing).

Should I keep this a sailors-only Hell, or expand admittance to everyone? Imagine the shock of a farmer, who maybe has never even seen the ocean, as he awakens in the Penitent Sea.

I would think a soul would have to remember, or else there's not much penance in it, if you just think you are drowning once. It's the repetition that should cause the torment. So anyone who can make it through is a bad monkeyfighter. I think I will put in a bit about how after every death, their waking location is closer to the island, although they may still be too far away for it to be seen. Then at first, it will be just a small dot on the horizon, maybe they don't even see it, or think it is a trick of the light. Then they start getting closer, and closer, until they see it and begin to hope, and actually try to get to the island, only to die again and have to start from scratch.

Yes, any soul who makes it through that is going to be formidable. Maybe they will even have the willpower to reject Fiddler's Green and return to earth.